


Unsaid

by somegunemojis



Series: Tender Mercies [5]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Bettino's villain origin story tbh, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:09:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26089210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somegunemojis/pseuds/somegunemojis
Summary: The ugly road to adulthood is one on which you will repeatedly discover you are capable of both more cruelty and kindness than you can imagine.
Series: Tender Mercies [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1893175





	Unsaid

21 December, 2003 -- Verona, Italy

His father has been missing for seven days when he gets the call, and he hadn't even known. His mother, frantic on the phone, telling him to meet her at the hospital. He’s not been home in nearly twice that time, too busy running around and getting drunk and into trouble, seventeen and stupid enough to believe things will just work out because they always have before. Bettino barely catches her when she falls into his arms as they find one another outside the hospital, lean with his long overdue growth spurt and shaking like a leaf. Shoshanna Tahan isn’t in much better shape herself, tears tracked down her cheeks and hardly able to string a sentence together.

She doesn’t ask him where the hell he’s been, or why he hasn’t called. She pulls him down to kiss his forehead, and they shuffle awkwardly inside, blinded for a moment by the harsh fluorescent light of the hospital hallways. He’s too shaken to tell her he loves her one more time, or to thank her for always being kind to him and raising him well, or to apologize to her for taking all the care they put into him and turning into a wretch of a son. They make their way to the morgue on unsteady feet, uncertain of the fate that lies ahead. 

For the rest of his miserable life he’ll never forget the noise she makes when she sees the body free of the sheet, sees the mess where the face is supposed to be. It’s a cross between a wail, a gasp, a choked sob, and as he turns around he watches her hands fly to her mouth, and then he watches all the life drain from her face and leave her grey and cold. 

Bettino can say these things to her all he wants: _I love you, mom. I’m sorry I wasn’t good. Thank you for being there for me._ He says them every day, begs her to come back to him. But there’s no one left to hear him-- she just watches out the window silently, waiting on a man that will never come home.

5 January, 2004 -- Verona, Italy

The sky is golden when they finally put his father in the ground. It had been a fight to get custody of the body, and every day that the investigation carried on wore on his soul like a whetstone, shaping him down into something smoother and sharper and far less kind. The January air is cold and crisp, the wind has a bite to it, and he wraps his mother in a scarf and a coat and he takes her to the cemetery. 

There’s a small crowd. It’s nice. Work friends offer him and his listless mother their condolences, neighbors bring food. His mother is silent, and he thanks them nervously, never even having been to a funeral before, now thrust to the forefront of one. Vincenzo Tahan’s gravestone is inscribed with Hebrew letters, the dates, a small epitaph. 

Let love become the gravestone that lies upon my life. 

Bettino stands silent vigil over the grave for hours after everyone leaves, his mother hunched beside him. 

_Thank you. I love you. I’m sorry._

He can’t make himself say the words over the fresh dirt, too hurt and angry with the man beneath it to squeeze his voice out from his throat. How dare he get involved in the first place, dragging himself into life with the mafia without asking or telling his family. How dare he sign his freedom and his life away on such empty promises. How dare he die, and leave them. How dare he die, and leave **him**. The anger fills his throat and clouds his eyes with tears. His mother watches him blankly, and then turns her gaze to the headstone. 

**_Thank you, I love you, I’m sorry._ **

**Vincenzo Tahan never hears those words either. Bettino can’t even remember what the last thing he ever said to him was.**


End file.
